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  1. josh

    Winking when you have 5 eyes and no eyelids except the all-cosuming darkness of oblivion that awaits all Cubs fans is no easy feat to illustrate.

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  2. JonKneeV

    Oh ya…

    So I went to AZ for Spring Training and caught the last game at HoHoKam. Some things from the non-regulars I saw-

    Alcantara started and looked like one of the best players on the field. It was just one game, but he looked smooth at short. He also tripled to right center and showed plus speed on the bases. He has a smoothness to him and that makes it look easy.

    Brett Jackson didn’t swing at a pitch and took a walk on a 3-1 pitch. He then tagged up to a deep fly to center. Then scored after taking third on a ground ball to the 3B who had to take a couple steps to his glove side. The 3B was late getting back to the bag and the throw from 1B got by.

    Everyone else was pretty meh, especially Carlos Villaneuva. Don’t expect a break out year.

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  3. EnricoPallazzo

    i am pretty hopeful re: alcantara. i don’t think he’s gonna be amazing or anything but i don’t think that he gets enough credit.

    can anyone comment on jim deshaies? i was watching the game at a bar without sound. i think most people here despised brenly so i would assume the general consensus is that JD is an improvement?

    also, i really hope that the rest of you are getting to enjoy the ad for “bad idea t-shirts”. i am becoming mildly obsessed with the model chick and her enormous rack.

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  4. WaLi

    EnricoPallazzo wrote:

    @mb – i can’t seem to log into the forum. did i get banned, or is there a new login procedure? i am also unable to logout and therefore can’t reset my OV password.

    You need to click on forgot password for the forum issue and create a new one. The logout issue MB is working on and should have it fixed later tonight.

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  5. Suburban kid

    dmick89 wrote:

    Of course it’s useful knowledge. It’s like pinch hitting for Rizzo or Castro because they’ve looked horrible in their last 2 at bats. Same thing. It’s believing in hot hand/cold hand without evidence.

    If hitter ABs lasted three outs, the same as most closers’ appearances, and Castro or Rizzo were swinging at balls in the dirt and over their heads for the first two outs, I’d conclude they are “cold” and pinch hit for them before the 3rd out.

    But I agree with your other point. I did not think Marmol was the best pitcher. Maybe if I did, I would think differently.

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  6. josh

    O’s and Ray’s are on MLB for free right now. After reading baseball between the numbers, I’ve really started to hate stolen bases.

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  7. josh

    I love stats like how many “lineups” the manager put out last year. That’s some tasty information. Lots of conclusions you can draw from that, such as ‘someone on staff can count’ and ‘managers do something.’

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  8. Berselius

    @ josh:

    Nothing like a rally-killing HR.

    Seriously though, the problem has more to do with lineup construction. You need to have someone with speed/SB skills worth a damn running and back of the lineup type hitters at the plate.

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  9. josh

    @ Berselius:
    Yeah, I remember they mentioned that it’s a better strategy with a weak hitting team. They also mentioned that Ricky Henderson gave back as much value getting caught as he earned swiping bags. It’s probably the timing that annoys me more than anything.

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  10. josh

    @ Suburban kid:
    According to fWAR they’re almost identical, but Fuld’s value is more defensive. Scheirholtz has an edge from having more years, but their last couple of years are about the same.

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  11. dmick89

    Suburban kid wrote:

    I’d conclude they are “cold” and pinch hit for them before the 3rd out.

    I don’t want the Cubs to revert to that type of decision making. One of the few positive things I can say about this organization is that they’ve come a long way in making better decisions than past front offices and field managers.

    Whether or not Marmol is the best reliever is arguable. He should have been traded after the 2011 season.

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  12. Suburban kid

    @ dmick89:
    Again, I don’t see a single hitter AB as the same thing as a pitcher appearance. Greg Maddux got replaced by worse pitchers almost every time.

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  13. dmick89

    @uncle dave – I think we can safely say that Marmol, and all pitchers who have similarly poor control are more streaky than the average pitcher. I think the problem in analyzing whether or not Marmol is more so, as some apparently think, is that we’d have to compare him to those similar pitchers. There just aren’t that many of them.

    I looked at pitchers who had control as bad as Marmol 2 or 3 years ago and the results were predictable: Marmol didn’t have a bright future ahead of him unless he’s an exception. Finding that group who are similar is difficult and would make any analysis very tough to do. It would probably be a waste of time because any info you got from it would likely be useless.

    I guess what I’m saying is that if others are saying he’s more streaking in throwing strikes than someone like Maddux or Cliff Lee, of course that’s true. If people are saying he’s more streaky than those few who have pitched as long as he with as high a walk rate, I’d disagree.

    47.6% of his pitches have been in the zone in his career. I’d bet $1 that he threw nearly that many (+ or -) in the zone yesterday. If someone wants to check, here’s a link: http://brooksbaseball.net/pfxVB/pfx.php

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  14. Aisle424

    @ Suburban kid:
    Replacing a starter and replacing a reliever are two different things though.

    Are we replacing a starter who has now thrown 120 pitches? Because Greg Maddux on pitch 121 may be a worse option than Designated Closer X, or even Main Set Up Guy Y.

    The problem with replacing a “struggling” or “cold” reliever after a couple of batters is that fatigue isn’t a factor (or shouldn’t be within the game situation yesterday – in the season, maybe Marmol on his 4th day in a row is not as good as a fresh Shawn Camp and that factors in to the decision as well). But yesterday, all the relievers were fresh and Sveum made the call that Marmol was his best reliever because your best reliever should be closing the game (theoretically). So what Sveum did was remove his best reliever after 4 batters, which is dumb if we are all in agreement that Marmol is the best reliever.

    I personally don’t think many people here think that is true and I also don’t think Sveum actually believes that. They are trying to build value in Marmol by building up Saves that they can then show to other GMs like they mean something. But at the same time, Sveum isn’t going to let Marmol fuck up a perfectly good outing by Samardzija, so he pulls the plug on Marmol and goes with his Russell/Fujikawa combo that he probably thinks is better anyway.

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  15. Aisle424

    Let’s forget I’m a little late showing up to the cowboy hat avatar party and embrace the fact that I bothered to show up at all.

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  16. dmick89

    Suburban kid wrote:

    Again, I don’t see a single hitter AB as the same thing as a pitcher appearance.

    The process with which you’ve reached your decision is the same.

    Suburban kid wrote:

    Greg Maddux got replaced by worse pitchers almost every time.

    Not when you factor in the numbers of times through the order. Take all his games that he pitched into the 7th or later and the score was within 1 (even 2) and I’d bet that he was replaced by a better pitcher many more times than not.

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  17. Suburban kid

    Aisle424 wrote:

    The problem with replacing a “struggling” or “cold” reliever after a couple of batters is that fatigue isn’t a factor (or shouldn’t be within the game situation yesterday – in the season, maybe Marmol on his 4th day in a row is not as good as a fresh Shawn Camp and that factors in to the decision as well).

    See, you were going to say it’s black and white (“after a couple of batters fatigue isn’t a factor”), but then you had to throw in some caveats, because it is never black and white. Lots of things “factor into the decision”, and hope it’s not just career or season stats and that’s it.

    But yesterday, all the relievers were fresh and Sveum made the call that Marmol was his best reliever because your best reliever should be closing the game (theoretically). So what Sveum did was remove his best reliever after 4 batters, which is dumb if we are all in agreement that Marmol is the best reliever.

    I’m going all in for the human element here, so I may prevent myself from ever having any baseball credibility around here: sometimes your best reliever doesn’t have it (not from fatigue), and you or your pitching coach or your catcher knows it. And when you have FACTORS like hey, it’s Opening Day, and hey, my team wanted to trade me in the offseason, and hey, they brought in a Japanese closer in the winter, and hey, some girl tried to frame me for sexual assault back home, and hey, it’s fricking freezing in Pittsburgh — I understand those olde school moves.

    I personally don’t think many people here think that is true and I also don’t think Sveum actually believes that. They are trying to build value in Marmol by building up Saves that they can then show to other GMs like they mean something.

    This is the MB/bubbles scenario where all the other GMs are too stupid to know stuff that us smart fuckers who follow the Cubs know.

    But at the same time, Sveum isn’t going to let Marmol fuck up a perfectly good outing by Samardzija, so he pulls the plug on Marmol and goes with his Russell/Fujikawa combo that he probably thinks is better anyway.

    We’re back to square one. He’s not the best reliever, so maybe that’s why we don’t mind yanking him.

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  18. dmick89

    Aisle424 wrote:

    So what Sveum did was remove his best reliever after 4 batters, which is dumb if we are all in agreement that Marmol is the best reliever.

    This should be in bold. We could probably debate which one of the relievers it the better pitcher for several weeks if we really wanted. If we assume that Carlos Marmol is the best reliever, because teams almost always use their best reliever (a closer) to save games, then I’m more than confident that the wrong decision was made yesterday based on what I’ve read in the past. What I mean by that is that it didn’t improve the Cubs chances of winning the game. I can’t know what Sveum knows so I won’t even bother guessing.

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  19. Suburban kid

    dmick89 wrote:

    Not when you factor in the numbers of times through the order. Take all his games that he pitched into the 7th or later and the score was within 1 (even 2) and I’d bet that he was replaced by a better pitcher many more times than not.

    So we let fatigue downgrade the greatest pitcher of our lifetimes to being worse than Will Ohman (because of times through the order), but we don’t let three baserunners and a run in 20 shitty pitches downgrade our closer? Because of career or season stats?

    Is there any analysis of the sustainment of shittiness in non-fatigued RPs? If the closer is our best pitcher in ANY non-fatigue situation because of his career/season stats, can we at least study their average performance in situations where they;ve just sucked for four batters?

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  20. Rice Cube

    @ Suburban kid:
    I get what you’re saying, but I think this part:

    Suburban kid wrote:

    If the closer is our best pitcher in ANY non-fatigue situation because of his career/season stats, can we at least study their average performance in situations where they;ve just sucked for four batters?

    …falls into “way too small a sample to make sense of anything” so it wouldn’t quite work anyway.

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  21. dmick89

    Suburban kid wrote:

    So we let fatigue downgrade the greatest pitcher of our lifetimes to being worse than Will Ohman (because of times through the order), but we don’t let three baserunners and a run in 20 shitty pitches downgrade our closer? Because of career or season stats?

    I don’t know what the exact numbers would be, SK. All I know is that by the 4th time through the order, only the very best pitchers are better than your average starter. Where would Maddux’s cutoff point be? Off the top of my head, I have no idea. I think the rule of thumb is something like an average hitter in terms of wOBA becoming Albert Pujols against an average pitcher the 4th time through the lineup. It’s fucking huge.

    We don’t let 19 or 20 pitches downgrade a pitcher unless there’s something specific that a manager or coach sees that’s off. Out of curiosity, how many times have you seen a starter look like complete shit in the 1st inning and then settle down? If people could accurately predict this, we’d see managers being more successful. They’d see a pitcher struggling, or succeeding, and make a decision based on that with success. They don’t.

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  22. dmick89

    Suburban kid wrote:

    Is there any analysis of the sustainment of shittiness in non-fatigued RPs? If the closer is our best pitcher in ANY non-fatigue situation because of his career/season stats, can we at least study their average performance in situations where they;ve just sucked for four batters?

    I’ll bet someone has done this. I would have looked around today, but I’ve been busy. I’m actually curious in that exact question. I feel pretty strongly that the results will show the previous 18-20 pitches were not at all a good predictor of how he’d throw after that. I don’t know for sure, but I would be super surprised to find otherwise.

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  23. Rice Cube

    Marmol faced 4 batters, threw 19 pitches, only 9 were strikes. Maybe the part where he threw 10 borderline-to-very-bad pitches is enough to make a manager and his pitching coach consider using someone else. I’m not smart enough to know whether it was the right decision, but it did work.

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  24. Suburban kid

    Perhaps it’s just a case of confirmation bias because the move worked. If Russell or Fujikawa blew the lead, maybe I’d be arguing that it was a bad decision and not a good one. Maybe I’m just sick of seeing the same guy blow leads and would prefer some fresh meat, but I welcomed the move at the time. Did you all think Sveum was being stupid when he yanked Marmol?

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  25. Rice Cube

    @ Rice Cube:
    I also get what you guys were saying above, but I don’t think it’s considered panic to make an assessment that your pitcher doesn’t have “it” and use someone else before the game is lost. Marmol may have eventually settled down and gotten some outs, but with randomness and sequencing and what not, that point may have been after the Pirates walk off and then you don’t get to see it. So whatevs…

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  26. Rice Cube

    @ Suburban kid:
    I figured that in that scenario, the scouting outweighed the numbers. Because of the inherent randomness of baseball Russell and Fujikawa very easily could have fucked it all up, but Cubs fans would’ve blamed Marmol anyway (dying laughing)

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  27. GBTS

    Are we really upset that the guy with the 1.46 WHIP over his last 107 appearances the last two years got pulled in the ninth inning of a two-run game after giving up a hit, walk, and HBP?

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  28. Suburban kid

    Rice Cube wrote:

    Marmol may have eventually settled down and gotten some outs, but with randomness and sequencing and what not, that point may have been after the Pirates walk off and then you don’t get to see it. So whatevs…

    Yes.
    Rice Cube wrote:

    Because of the inherent randomness of baseball Russell and Fujikawa

    There you go again. You know, the randomness of baseball sometimes makes me question the entire validity of the sport. Smashing a ball equally hard on two occasions, but on one the value is 1.000 and the other is worth .000? FML

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  29. Suburban kid

    GBTS wrote:

    Are we really upset that the guy with the 1.46 WHIP over his last 107 appearances the last two years got pulled in the ninth inning of a two-run game after giving up a hit, walk, and HBP?

    MB, Aisley, and I think Rizzo the Rat are. I’m not.

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  30. dmick89

    Suburban kid wrote:

    Did you all think Sveum was being stupid when he yanked Marmol?

    No, but I’m not really the one to ask. The only thing that pissed me off was that it was a commercial break, but mid-inning relief changes piss me off for that reason all the time. I wouldn’t have been any more pissed off if the Cubs brought in their worst reliever. Wouldn’t have cared if they brought in a position player to replace Marmol. Wins and losses are so 2008. I’ve moved on. (dying laughing)

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  31. dmick89

    Suburban kid wrote:

    MB, Aisley, and I think Rizzo the Rat are. I’m not.

    I’ve specifically left Marmol out of the discussion as much as possible so why do you say that I’m upset? I think it was clear that RtR was talking about the idea that we, or anyone, can accurately predict how someone will do based on “he’s not looking so good.”

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  32. Rice Cube

    @ Suburban kid:
    That’s what they call “luck” 😀 I think MO used to get pissed off about this too.

    The other question you asked earlier and I might be paraphrasing may apply here…what’s the likelihood in that situation on Opening Day that Marmol would have been able to nail down the save? What’s the manager’s threshold of tolerance? 75%?

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  33. uncle dave

    @ dmick89:
    I guess I was getting at something different, namely whether or not there was some issue that might cause him to be streakier than you’d expect from his peer group. I’m willing to accept that most player performance is random, at least to the extent that most of the variation is not something you can detect or control. However, there are exceptions, and the disconnect between Marmol’s talent and his ability to consistently throw strikes seems unusual to me.

    Again, there are other ways for the club to figure that out besides raw statistical analysis (though we are limited by being outsiders). I think that if you had access to every team in MLB you’d find that surprisingly few put much in the way of resources and effort to understand mental, psychological, and even certain nontraditional physical factors and how they relate to player performance. As front offices become more sophisticated and the system becomes tougher to game, this seems like an area where savvy teams can get an edge.

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  34. dmick89

    However, there are exceptions, and the disconnect between Marmol’s talent and his ability to consistently throw strikes seems unusual to me.

    There are definitely exceptions and Marmol may even be one. To me, Marmol has always been that guy who could have been a front if the rotation starter had a few things broken in his favor. Better control to state the obvious. He’s that guy who was a raw prospect and if some things go right, he’s making 34 starts a year atop a rotation. He’s also that guy who is raw and needs things to break in his favor to get there.

    In the end, it doesn’t and to his credit he’s out together a decent career anyway. There are a lot of pitchers, ones who have more potential, that aren’t even able to do that.

    He’s the opposite of Andruw Jones if you know what I mean. Jones made it look so easy. Marmol makes it look so difficult.

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  35. Rizzo the Rat

    dmick89 wrote:

    I think it was clear that RtR was talking about the idea that we, or anyone, can accurately predict how someone will do based on “he’s not looking so good.”

    Yes. Studies on streakiness (e.g., the ones in The Book) lead me to cast a skeptical eye on claims that a player is “cold” on any given day or week.

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  36. GW

    @ Rizzo the Rat:

    pitchers do tend to be streaky. more difficult to tell with relievers, of course. i don’t see the point in arguing about it in marmol’s case because he’s not very good. the job should probably go to fujikawa or better yet a platoon with russell. but if my manager isn’t going to give the job to the best pitcher (as is the case with lots of managers), i’m sure as hell not going to complain about him having a quick trigger.

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  37. Rizzo the Rat

    Whether or not Marmol should be closer is a separate issue entirely; the question is whether you can tell a pitcher is “off” after four bad plate appearances.

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  38. Rizzo the Rat

    Yeah, I’m going to try to watch the bottom of the ninth. Hopefully, mlb.com will be good and let me.

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  39. Rizzo the Rat

    Also, the Astros’ bullpen is doing everything in their power to prevent the bottom of the ninth from happening.

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  40. GW

    @ Rizzo the Rat:

    that’s what you would like the issue to be, evidently. to me the issue is “how much worse is the pitcher that would be brought in to replace him?” based on the answer to that question, we can judge how high our level of suspicion need be that the closer is “off” in order to justify making the change. when the closer is marmol, the point is moot, since his replacements are better.

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  41. dmick89

    Who are all these replacements who are better? I haven’t paid enough attention, but I think the bullpen includes the likes of Takahashi, Rondon, Bowden and Russell. I’m no fan of Marmol, but if all the relievers are better than him, I’m taking the Cubs as having the best bullpen in baseball this year.

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